Midland mom remembers what it’s like to be homeless

Published 10:58 am, Friday, March 21, 2014

Nursing school is always a challenge. It’s even more difficult when you’re a homeless single mother.

For more than six months, Lucy Gutierrez lived out of her car while attending nursing school.

The Lamesa native was the first in her family to graduate from high school and had secured a job working at a prison. Her shifts were long, sometimes 16 hours without a break. She barely had enough money to pay for groceries and even less time to spend with her daughter, Jobi Bernal.

She knew she couldn’t keep living like this, so she decided to become a licensed vocational nurse (LVN) to pursue her love of caring for the elderly. She enrolled in nursing school at South Plains College in Levelland, more than an hour’s drive from her home in Lamesa.

That’s when the trouble began. Gutierrez couldn’t afford gas money to commute back and forth every day. She also couldn’t afford to leave school and return to a job with no future.

She made one of the hardest decisions of her life. For the next six months, she lived out of her car in Levelland on the weekdays while her daughter stayed at her sister’s home in Lamesa. She kept a suitcase with clothes and toiletries in the car and often slept with the windows down, trying desperately to keep out the gnats. During the day, she worked hard in school and studied in the library.

Every Friday, after her classes ended, Gutierrez made the drive back home to wash her clothes and spend a precious day with her daughter. Every Sunday, she drove back to school for another five nights in her car.

She packed a lunch for Monday and Tuesday, but by the time Wednesday rolled around, she was usually out of food. A Baptist church across the street offered meals for 50 cents, but she didn’t have 50 cents. Near the end of the semester she learned it was a suggested donation.

“All of the students thought I was a snob because I wouldn’t eat with them,” she said. “It wasn’t that. I didn’t have the money to pay.”

Many nights, she went hungry.

The college fitness center was free for students, so Gutierrez would often pretend she had just finished a workout and take a shower. She became friends with the dorm mother of one of the women’s dorms, who would let her sleep on the couch whenever she was on duty.

“Once in a while, she’d let me in, and we’d pretend that we were talking, but I’d fall asleep there,” she said.

Through it all, Gutierrez was taking a full load of nursing classes. No one knew she was living in her car, not even her daughter. She didn’t want to hurt her daughter’s feelings or put stress on any of her family members.

However, it quickly became too much to handle. After six months, Gutierrez learned about Buckner Family Place, a safe housing community in Midland for single parents seeking higher education. She applied, figuring nothing could be worse than her current living situation, and was overjoyed to be accepted. She made plans to transfer to Midland College.

Gutierrez remembers coming to Midland to see her new apartment, a little fearful of how it would look. When she saw the “pretty little gate” and clean rooms, she wasn’t sure she was in the right place. She remembers excitedly telling her daughter, “Look, Jobi, the stove works!” They had never before lived in a place where everything worked and they felt safe.

All apartments at Buckner Family Place come furnished, but Gutierrez didn’t know that at first, and her furniture hadn’t arrived yet. She remembers gazing around the empty rooms and being grateful to have such a beautiful apartment. She thought she’d get a mattress and sleep on the floor. When she came back a few days later, it was completely furnished.

“I thought they’d given my apartment to someone else,” she said with a laugh.

Crestfallen, Gutierrez inquired with the staff, who told her it all belonged to her, and if she completed her LVN, she could take the furniture with her when she moved out.

Two and a half years later, she did. Gutierrez graduated with her LVN in 2010, the first in her family to graduate from college. She now works in private care. She moved out of Buckner Family Place and has her own apartment in Midland with her daughter, Jobi, who is now 16 and will graduate from high school next year. Jobi plans to go to college. Gutierrez’s two older sons are married.

She’s never forgotten what it feels like to be homeless. As a way to give back to the community, Gutierrez inspired a group of mothers and children who currently live at Buckner Family Place to partner with Church Under the Bridge to feed the homeless. They prepared meals and distributed them to the homeless Saturday after Church Under the Bridge’s service.

“The ladies who live here wanted to show their kids that they really are blessed and well taken care of, and there are others that are less fortunate than they are,” said Anna Rodriguez, program coordinator for Buckner Family Place.

Meanwhile, Gutierrez is looking forward to the next step of her life. As the eighth of 18 children (plus seven step-siblings), she’s grown up taking care of everyone else. She’s ready to truly live for herself.